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The Mass Media's Mass Hysteria

Occasionally our mass media tries to put a headline crime in context. They usually succeed only in displaying grotesque laziness and historical illiteracy.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech was not even close! to being "the worst massacre in US history" or the "worst shooting massacre in US history" -- and to call it such is to put on public display your utter and complete ignorance.

"Worst massacre?" Have you forgotten 9/11 already? Oklahoma City? What about the multiple massacres of Native Americans? Take your pick. Ever hear of Wounded Knee? What about the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

Nor was it even the worst "school massacre" or "campus massacre" in the United States. This was. You'd think our media would've figured this out when they erroneously labeled Columbine the "worst school massacre in US history."

Are they so hyped up on sensationalism that their memory fails them? Or do they just not give a good goddamn?

It is truly regrettable for so many reasons. The public is left to think that mass murders are now an "epidemic," that our society has somehow worsened over time, and that our laws have to be changed to respond to new threats. Without an accurate historical context, it's easy to come to the wrong conclusions.

Thank God the only copycats to surface so far are our nation's lazy, stupid journalists.

The following are new members of the Clews Hall of Shame! Shame! Shame! This list would be even longer, but I'll give media outside the US a pass on this one. Each of these media outlets screwed up (though there's always the faint hope that, by the time you click on these links, some might have corrected themselves) --

Court TV Crime Library ("the worst mass murder in American history," indeed! This is a particularly egregious and unforgivable error on a website that purports to offer encyclopedic treatment of historic crimes, including articles on the Bath massacre and Mountain Meadows.)

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I agree with you. It's an insult to see this claims printed. No one researches anything these days. Look at all of the 'journalists' who have been fired for reporting fake news in the recent past. I don't trust anything that is reported any more. Look at the photographer from Toledo who was fired for submitting fake photos to the Blade.

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2007/04/toledo05.html

I can't even trust newspapers to print an undoctored photo.

Nobody cares about history. Nobody pays any mind to consequences. We live in the now. All the past was good for was to get us to this moment in time.

Even the criminologists are fuzzing up the facts--check out James Alan Fox's piece in the New York Post on Wednesday April 18. He gives in to the mass media hype and identifies some "reasons" why such crimes are more "common" now, consisting of completely unsubstantiated and vague statistics about how our society is increasingly alienating and competitive. Utterly ridiculous, and disturbing considering his position as a professor at Northeastern University, and as somebody who really ought to know better.

I find Cal State Fullerton's THE DAILY TITAN's inclusion disturbing as they suffered from their own school shooting by Edward Allaway whom I wrote about in HOLLYWOOD DEATH SCENES. You would assume that the "journalist" from that school would have done her homework.

You could have added the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by William Quantrill and his raiders in August 1863 where over 100 men and boys were killed. Also the grisly attack on Union troops at Emporia, Kansas (I think that is where it was) by Bloody Bill Anderson and raiders in 1864 - most of the troops were actually musicians for Union army bands. The mutilations involved make it really worse than it was (if that is possible). There was (in the 20th Century) the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916 in San Francisco, and the Wall Street bombing in 1920 (the first of four lower Manhattan terrorist events) that had large loss of life (and I forgot the Haymarket Square Bombing in 1886, not to mention it's judicial lynching aftermath). I think the shock of the school shootings was that school students were behind them. Small comfort for that reason.

NewspaperArchiveMy most very favorite site on the internet. Millions of digitized, text-searchable newspapers from across the U.S. and the world. If my computer somehow froze up and I had access to only one website, this would be it.

Paper of Record Another pay-to-play website that features searchable historic newspapers. Canada is particularly well represented in its collection.